


Blood of the Blood

by eeyore9990



Series: 30 Thankful Days [19]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Accidental Bonding, Accidental Marriage, BAMF John, Biting, Bonding, Canon-Typical Violence, M/M, Mysterious Deaton
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-20
Updated: 2015-11-20
Packaged: 2018-05-02 12:25:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5248196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eeyore9990/pseuds/eeyore9990
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When hunters attack, blood is shed.  Blood shed on the Blood Moon rarely means anything good for those involved.  Although, maybe... maybe this time it <i>does</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blood of the Blood

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Valress (Val_Brown)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Val_Brown/gifts).



> 30 Thankful Days, Day 19: Gift for Valress

Bullets flew, hunters pouring in from all sides, their target the pack. Claws came out, teeth ripped and tore as the pack defended themselves. And from above, arrows, more bullets… these focused on the 'hunters' who'd dared to enter the McCall territory with the intent to harm innocents. 

John breathed out, squeezed, breathed in. Again and again, not daring to shift his gaze from his targets. Not daring to look for his son -- so _human_ and fragile in this mess of death and destruction. He squeezed until his slide locked open, then he hit the button, dropping one magazine and popping another in. 

A scream rent the air, the power behind it making the hunters below flinch and cover their ears, allowing John to get off three more shots without having to worry about return fire. His trigger finger began to feel the strain of his trigger pull, but he ignored it and just kept shooting. He couldn't stop; if he stopped Lydia might scream again. 

He could hear Stiles now, could hear him laughing and taunting the hunters because his kid was a little prick with a deathwish. John was going to kill him himself if they made it out of this alive. 

And then there was an explosion and the entire world went ass over teakettle. 

When John could sort everything out again, he found himself below where he'd been standing. Looking around, his ears ringing at such a pitch that he couldn't hear _anything_ , he saw the pack still fighting, but slower. Bloodier. They were getting weak and every once in a while, John saw glances darted to his corner of the room. 

Rolling, he felt something tear and pull… oh, that was rebar he's just pulled himself off of. All right then. Stumbling to his feet, John pushed his free hand against his side, saw Chris digging Allison out of the rubble, and turned to see-- 

The man came out of nowhere, a machete -- there was a joke on the tip of John's tongue about knives and gunfights -- raised high, already on its downward swing to cleave John's head from his shoulders when a blur of brown struck the man and one of the wolves ripped his throat out so violently that John saw a flash of bone from the man's spine peeking through. 

Slowly, so slowly, John raised his gun, still in his hand, and took aim. The wolf looked up, their eyes met long enough for John to see that it was Peter Hale who'd saved him, right before he pulled the trigger one final time. A second later another shot went off, this one from the other side of Peter. 

But John's aim had been true and his bullet hit, sending the hunter's aim off course, merely grazing Peter's arm instead of hitting him in the heart as intended. The hunter, though, wasn't so lucky; John's bullet had ripped through his lung. He'd die slow and in a great deal of pain. 

John couldn't bring himself to care. 

Shuffling through the debris from the blast, John hobbled over to the hunter and kicked his gun away, in case he got any ideas about using it. And then, for good measure, he picked up the hunter's own gun and put a bullet in his head with it. There, now he could turn his back. 

But as he turned, he started to fall, his injuries and the crashing adrenaline sending him to his knees. Something caught him, strong arms lifting him and a dangerously monstrous face lowering over him, sniffing along his side. 

"Dad!" 

John raised his hand, waving it weakly at Stiles, letting his kid know he was alive, at least for the moment. And then he closed his eyes against the world spinning in a dizzying kaleidoscope of color and piercing sound. 

\-- 

Waking up was a surprise. It was actually a goddamn shock, because John had been sure he was bleeding out, dying. Instead, here he was, squinting against the sunshine trying to drill through his skull. 

A bigger surprise, though, when he stopped to think about it, was that he didn't feel any different than he did on any other morning. Actually, scratch that. He felt _better_ than he did on any other morning, which shouldn't be possible. 

For one thing, he shouldn't be waking on a beautifully soft mattress; he should be in a wildly uncomfortable hospital bed, aching from all his various injuries. He should feel the icy pressure of an IV line, and possibly even the weightlessness of traction because he'd _fallen ten feet_ onto blasted apart concrete and jagged bits of rebar. 

Swallowing roughly, he moved his hand, feeling along his side for the place he distinctly remembered the rebar tearing through him. And it wasn't there. 

"Goddammit, Scott," he muttered, closing his eyes against the terrible knowledge of what that idiot kid had done. Most likely because _his_ idiot kid had made him. 

As much as Stiles fought back against the idea of ever being turned, John honestly couldn't believe that he'd let Scott do this to him. Well, scratch that. He could definitely believe it. His kid'd had regular panic attacks for almost a decade from nothing more than the fear that John might die and leave him orphaned. 

Pushing himself to a sitting position, John took a minute to look around. He wasn't at home, or the hospital. He wasn't in the McCall's spare bedroom, and he was fairly certain that this wasn't one of the rooms in the upper level of Derek's loft, so… 

And then there was a polite cough from the doorway. John looked up to see Peter Hale standing there, two cups of coffee steaming lightly in his hands. John held up one hand, rolling it a little to hurry Peter along. He had question he wanted answers to, but nothing was more important at this moment than the caffeine Peter was holding hostage. 

After he'd drunk deeply, wincing when the coffee burned a path through his mouth and down his throat, John muttered a gruff, "Thanks." 

"I don't know what you tell yourself about me, Sheriff, but I am always a gentleman to the men who share my bed." 

John quirked an unamused eyebrow at the man before going back to his coffee. It was _wonderful_ , the deep, dark flavor that only came from the best, freshly ground, beans. Holding a bit in his mouth, he savored it before letting it roll down his throat. Then, he sat up further, scooting back until he could lean against the thick wood of the headboard. 

The headboard of _Peter Hale's_ bed. 

That would take some getting used to. 

"So, when can I expect to start howling at the moon?" he asked finally, never one to shy away from the hard questions. 

"I was going to ask you that myself. You've been hiding something from us, Sheriff." Peter slowly ran his gaze along John's body, his lips pursed. "What are you?" 

John blinked at that, then shifted on the bed to put his coffee down on the bedside table. "Scott bit me," he said, like it was a fact. 

"Really? Because Scott doesn't recall doing so. And your dear little offspring is torn between being extremely thankful that you're alive and also panicking over what this means for _him._ " 

Pressing a hand to his forehead, John tried to order his thoughts and found that to be impossible. There were too many questions with no answers. "Okay, start at the beginning. What happened last night? Who did Lydia scream for?" 

Peter's nostrils flared as he scented the air, obviously trying to get a lock on John's emotions. Trying to _read_ him. Then he just shrugged and took a sip of his coffee, stalling. "Our little banshee queen screamed for… you. But you didn't die. The only other time she's ever screamed for a person who didn't die, it was for Derek. And he didn't die because he evolved." Peter sat on the bed, close to John's hip, and leaned forward. "What did you evolve from, _Janusz Stilinski_? What are you evolving _into_?" 

John let Peter come, not flinching. "I'm human," he said simply. "I've been human all my life. My parents were human. My grandparents… So you tell me, _Peter Hale_ ," he mocked in the same tone Peter had used, "what happened to me?" 

"You healed." Peter crawled closer and dragged his nose up John's throat, breathing in the scent of him. "You healed like a wolf." 

"I've never been bitten," John murmured, swallowing roughly as Peter buried his nose behind John's ear. Peter's hand came up, steadying himself against John's chest as he continued his wolf-like sniffing of John. "You can hear a lie, Hale. I've never been bitten and as far as I know, I'm fully human. _So what happened to me?_ " 

Peter pulled back and his eyes were bright, flaring blue. Something inside John responded to that look and he felt his lips pulling back, baring his teeth just before he lunged forward. It was like he was outside of himself, no control over his body at all, as he latched onto Peter's throat and bit down, breaking the skin, gnashing his teeth into the wound until blood spilled across his tongue. And then… and then he settled, and he was back inside himself. 

Back inside himself with a mouthful of Peter's blood. 

Stomach turning violently, he pushed Peter out of the way and leaned to the side, dry heaving as he spit the blood from his mouth onto the pristine white carpet that lined Peter's floor. Oops. 

"What the hell," he asked, body suddenly overtaken by shivers, "was that? What the goddamn hell is happening to me?" 

"I believe that's a question for our dear town vet." 

\-- 

"I'm sorry, explain that again?" Stiles demanded, shouldering past Derek and Scott and getting right up in Deaton's face. "Because it fucking sounded like you said--" 

"Stiles!" John snapped, grabbing his son and jerking him backward. Then he turned to Deaton and said, "Though I wouldn't be averse to a little more information, Alan." 

"You're not a wolf. You're still very human, in fact. But you are bonded to Peter, which gives you the ability to heal through him. _Blood of the blood._ " Deaton looked from one person to another, obviously some sort of smug stalling tactic. "Last night was the Blood Moon, it's why the hunters attacked when they did. They thought they were going to catch you off guard, that your control would be tested by the moon." 

Derek nodded, stroking one hand along his jaw in a way that made a harsh _scritching_ sound. "It was harder to shift back, after. I thought…" He shrugged, looking to Scott, who nodded for him to continue. "I thought it was just the adrenaline from the fight not having worn off, but yeah, it was probably due to the stronger pull of the moon." 

"You spilled blood in defense of Peter," Deaton said, addressing John again. "After he spilled blood in defense of you. At some point, your own blood must have mixed." 

"Oh _fuck_ ," Stiles said, then backed all the way to the wall before sliding down it, hands gripping his hair as he looked from Deaton to John to Peter with wide, fearful eyes. "Fuck!" 

"The point they're dancing around," Peter said with a roll of his eyes and a bone-dry voice, "is that we're bonded by blood. We spilled blood of the enemy and then mixed our own blood -- from my arm and your side, most likely -- on the night of the Blood Moon. Blood of the blood." 

"So, what? We're… werewolf married?" John asked around a burst of incredulous laughter. 

He could literally hear crickets coming from somewhere else in the clinic as everyone just stared at him in varying degrees of horror and professional blankness. 

Holding up his hand, he took a deep breath and said, "Not that I'm not grateful, because I am. I'm here. I'm alive. That's…" Looking at Peter, he shrugged. "I am grateful. But if we can get werewolf married so easily--" 

"It's a blood bond, Dad," Stiles whispered, and it was only then that John realized he'd been flinching every time John said _married_. Dammit, why was his kid here for this? 

"Whatever it is, surely there's a way to undo it. Who do I talk to to get a werewolf annulment?" 

Peter walked over to lean against the wall by Stiles, lips curving into a smile that lit up his eyes. "There's no way of breaking a blood bond, dear." 

"I could kill you," Stiles snapped, lunging to his feet. 

"Now, now," Peter's smile twisted around on itself until it was the shit-eatingest smirk John had ever seen. And he'd raised _Stiles_. "Is that any way to talk to your dear mommy?" 

John intervened before blood could be shed. Again. God knew he didn't need to be tied in a three way bond with his son. 

What the fuck was his life? 

\-- 

Steering clear of Peter lasted all of five hours. There was an itching under John's skin the further he got from the clinic. By the time he was home, he could do nothing but pace, dragging his fingers through his hair and nearly tearing at his scalp with his fingers. 

"Dad?" 

The fear and _despair_ in Stiles' voice made John whirl toward him, made him twitchy with the need to kill something. With his hands. John shrank back instead, before the thing he ripped to pieces became his own son. 

"I can't…" John shook his head, gaze skittering around the room as he tried to focus on something. Anything. 

Stiles closed his eyes, shoulders slumping in defeat. "It's the bond," he said, his voice utterly flat. "You need. You need him. You need _Peter_." 

As Stiles spoke those damning words, the front door opened. Derek stood there, Peter over his shoulder in a fireman's carry. 

Something in John froze at seeing Peter like that. Limp and unconscious. "What happened?" he growled, striding forward, hands reaching up to rip Peter's body from Derek's hold. 

"I had to knock him out," Derek said, shrugging and only not dropping Peter to the floor because the stairs were in the way. So Peter fell against those, his head lolling to the side. "He was… I was afraid he'd hurt someone," Derek muttered, looking past John at Stiles. 

Afraid he'd hurt _Stiles_ for being so close to John. It wasn't said aloud, but they all heard it. 

John nodded and dragged a weary hand down his face. "Stiles," he said, mouth twisting as he tried to think how to say this. "Pack a bag." John waited until Stiles skirted around him, and then Peter's splayed form, and went up the stairs to his room. "Derek…" He looked over, met the younger man's eyes and winced. "Any idea how long this is going to take?" 

Derek just shook his head, solemn. "The longer you fight it, the worse it is. If you just… accept it, accept the bond and the pull of it…" He broke off, sighed, and said, "I know you have objections. I know Peter isn't a choice you would have made on your own, but… When my aunt was alive? They were good. _He_ was good. I think this could be good for him. For you as well." 

John nodded and gestured to Peter. "Mind carrying him up to my room? It's the least I can do after…" He thought about a soft mattress and bright sunlight. "It's the least I can do," he repeated softly. 

After Derek carried Peter to John's bed, the bed he'd only ever shared with one other person, John found Stiles and pulled him into a tight hug, whispered words of love, and promised to call as often as possible. And then he shut and locked the door behind Derek and Stiles, watched them drive away, and called in to the department to cash in some sick leave. 

When he was done, he walked up the steps, shoulders straight and purpose in every move. It wasn't what he'd have chosen, no. 

But, he thought as he looked down at Peter Hale's body splayed out against his sheets, it wasn't exactly a hardship, either. Derek was right. 

This could be very good, indeed. 


End file.
